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March 02, 2013

Below is an item from a list written by an online marketer who calls himself Johnny B Truant.﻿

The best moneymaking and success strategy is to be awesome. ﻿It’s amazing how many people fret about perfecting their marketing strategy when what they have to offer is total shit. Sure, marketing and SEO and positioning matter… but only once you are producing awesome stuff. No matter how many times we talk about marketing funnels or KDP Select promotion strategy on the podcast, the bottom-line advice always boils down to, “Keep writing awesome books that people love.” That philosophy applies to everything.﻿

This resonates with me especially because I was approached recently to work on a book series that has a lot of promotional angles to it, but when I read the description of the actual content, it was terrible, so I declined.

It's easy to get so hung up on marketing--which certainly is important--that sometimes core quality gets lost. We have to remind ourselves that while hooks and gimmicks can help sell things, we have to be careful not to let the marketing dictate the content, or at least not to the point where it hurts the quality. This can be very hard when we are working for someone else so we owe it to ourselves even more to to do it when we do our own work.

(Want to learn how to focus and overcome procrastination? Get my book, "Focus: use the power of targeted thinking to get more done." It's published by Pearson and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

February 20, 2013

He pointed out that there are many reasons that we, as adults, resist the impulse we may feel to tell stories. One is that it seems daunting to write something as long as a novel or screenplay. In answer to that, he quoted Roland Barthes on how Flaubert wrote: "Flaubert did not write a novel. He merely connected one sentence after another. The eros between sentences, that is the essence of Flaubert's novels."

Yung-ha Kim said, "That's right--a novel, basically, is writing one sentence, then, without violating the scope of the first one, writing the next sentence. And you continue to make connections."

Maybe that makes it sound too simple, but I've found that often when a book or a screenplay doeasn't work it's because the story takes a sudden turn in the direction of what the writer thought might be an interesting scene but that in some way betrays what went before.

If you're hesitating about writing, start now with one page. Tomorrow write another one. If at some point you feel ready to work out the rest of the story, go for it. Otherwise keep following one page with another and have faith.

(The great writers like Dickens and Austen and Twain had advice to help writers. I've collected it all and added tips on how to apply that advice to your own novel or script. The book is called "Your Creative Writing Masterclass" and you can buy it right now at Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

January 28, 2013

Sometimes people ask me what should an author's website should look like and what its content should be. There are several functions an author's website can serve:

* to tell about the author - you could have a general, interesting bio for readers who are curious, and a more comprehensive media page with a downloadable photo, some interviews with you (even if you have to make them up yourself), press clippings if you have any, an extended bio (with emphasis on anything unusual reporters can use as a hook), your availability for interviews or events, any positive reviews, and of course contact information.

* to whet readers' appetite for a forthcoming book. You could include relevant images (e.g., if you did research somewhere and took photos), some character bios, an intriguing paragraph or two about the plot, etc.)

* to provide an experience to supplement the reading of the book. This might include character biographies, "deleted scenes" from your novel, articles about how and why you chose to write this story, an audio or video interview with you, games, puzzles, contests, etc.

It's the site for a new series of books with the umbrella title "Finishing School," aimed at a Young Adult audience. Here's a a screen shot of part of the home page:

As you'll see if you go to the site, it took some skill and expense to create. My guess is the publisher was willing to foot the bill because this site will service a series of books, not just one, and the author, Gail Carriger, is already well established. Here is her whimsical bio from the site:

New York Times Bestselling author Gail Carriger writes to cope with being raised in obscurity by an expatriate Brit and an incurable curmudgeon. She survived her early years by reading most of her local library and memorizing Greek battles. Eventually, she escaped small town life and inadvertently acquired several degrees in Higher Learning. In pursuit of further finishing, Ms. Carriger traveled the historic cities of Europe, subsisting entirely on biscuits secreted in her handbag. She now resides in the Colonies, surrounded by fantastic shoes, where she insists on tea imported from London.

This is a good example of a bio that has the same tone as the books the site promotes. Matching the style of your book (funny bio if your book is amusing, for instance) creates a more enjoyable experience for the visitor.

Unless you have a fair amount of money at your disposal, probably you won't be able to come up with a site with this many bells and whistles. However, it can still serve as a good model for a light-hearted approach. If you can find a student interested in practicing his or her After Effects skills, even the limited animations on this site wouldn't be difficult to emulate.

Take a close look at the sites of a variety of authors so you can discover for yourself what works, what doesn't, and what you can take them them in order to construct your own. If you're curious about how they achieved a particular effect, don't be afraid to write to them; most authors are glad to help.

(Do you need ideas for how to market your book? You'll find chapters on both traditional and guerrilla marketing for writers in my book, "Your Writing Coach." It's published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

January 27, 2013

In the previous post I told the story of Ron Tanner, who did
a forty-state, sixty-city book tour to promote his book, ““From Animal House to
Our House: A Love Story,” about the refurbishment of an old fraternity house.

Did he make any
profit?

How many books did he sell? In the article he says he’s
still trying to figure that out. I’m not sure why he doesn’t have at least an
educated guess, so I’m going to risk making one.

He made 60 appearances. Let’s say the average attendance was
15. That’s 900 people, let’s round that up to 1000. How many of those bought?
My guess would be ten percent, or 100.

The book costs $25, so if he bought them at the author’s
rate he probably made $5 on each one. That would make his take a total of $500,
which would have been less than he spent on gas and other expenses.

So, net profit: zero or possibly minus a few hundred
dollars. He did get exposure via his media appearances, and now via the article
I’m quoting. It’s possible that the effort will stimulate some follow-on sales. That might just
put him into the black if you don’t count the cost of his time for four months.

Other benefits

However, money is not the only way to measure something like
this. In an article In Poets and Writers Magazine, Tanner writes, “If you think
that a book tour should make money and/or you should easily recoup your
expenses, then stay home and query book bloggers. If, on the other hand, you
believe that by putting yourself in motion, by meeting as many people as you
can, you will be better off as a writer, then the DIY book tour is for you.” He
mentions that it can be done on weekends if you don’t want to commit four
months the way he did.

The book tour that
made Wayne Dyer rich

In 1976 Wayne Dyer wrote a self-help book called Your Erroneous Zones (a play on the
title of a sex book popular at the time, Your Erogenous Zones). The book was going nowhere and the publisher
was not promoting it so Dyer took matters into his own hands.

Dyer quit his teaching job and for six months drove his
station wagon across the United States. He went onto local radio and TV
stations and did interviews with local and regional newspapers. He took a load
of books with him and convinced book store owners to put it in their windows
ahead of his media appearances. When he ran out of books his wife shipped more
ahead to the next town.

It worked. The publisher realized that they were getting a
lot of orders for this book and decided to back it with publicity and promotion
as well.

The book has sold an estimated 35 million copies and is
still in print. It was on the New York Times best-seller list for 64 weeks and
paved the way for Dyer to write many more self-help books and become one of the
top personal development speakers in the world.

What’s the
difference?

Why was Dyer’s tour such a spectacular success compared to
Tanner’s?

Book publishing and sales have changed. There are fewer book
stores and, as Tanner points out, many independents are struggling and don’t
have the time or money to promote speakers. Also when books don’t sell right
away they tend to return them to the publishers to get their money back, so the
books doesn’t stay on display or on the shelves for as long as they used to.

Dyer’s book had a wider appeal, Tanner’s is more of a niche
interest. Most people are interested in improving themselves and their
relationships. Compared to that, relatively few want to pay $25 to read about
house being refurbished. Niche books do break out from time to time, but it’s a
long shot.

There are fewer newspapers and people’s attention is more
fragmented. Back in 1976 if you were interviewed in a local newspaper or
appeared on a local television show probably you reached a majority of the
adults in that community. Now a lot of those newspapers are gone and TV
viewership is down. A panellist at
the recent Digital Book World conference in New York said these days only 10%
of book awareness comes from traditional media.

What’s the lesson for
authors?

A cross-country tour sounds like quite an adventure and may
not be without potential payoffs for certain kinds of books. However, as Tanner
says, if your goal is to sell the most copies, it’s not the way to go. These
days the internet is where to find readers, even though four months in a room
working on Facebook and Twitter doesn’t sound nearly as appealing as a road
trip with a basset hound.

(These days it
requires guerrilla marketing to make an impact. You’ll find a chapter on that,
as well as a chapter on traditional marketing, in my book, “Your Writing
Coach.” It’s published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your
other favorite book seller.)

January 10, 2013

"I read and I walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me." -- Anna Quindlen

That one hits home for me; I used to wander around the Stanford campus late at night when I was a student there, sometimes feeling like I was in a movie but not knowing whether it was a comedy or a tragedy. Come on, those are the years when it's easy to imagine yourself as some kind of doomed hero because you don't yet have a mortgage to think about and you doubt you'll ever make it to old age (40) anyway. I think it did occur to me that the person who had to step out of the darkness could be me, or even that it had to be me, I just didn't know how--but it always seemed to involve writing.

"You fail only if you stop writing" -- Ray Bradbury

Bradbury never did stop writing, not until he stopped breathing. He gave you the feeling they were pretty much the same thing.

After the 99th rejection or a few particularly frustrating incidents it can be tempting to stop, but one thing I've found helpful is to switch to a different genre or even a totally different type of writing for a while.

I've spent a lot of my career writing scripts but when I got fed up with some of the more aggravating aspects of that, I switched to writing non-fiction books.

At the moment I'm back to writing a script, but also trying out something totally new for me, a young adult novel.

Yes, it's good to focus your efforts because breaking in to any type of writing is a challenge and you don't want to spread yourself too thin. However, sometimes it's healthy. As the saying goes, sometimes a change is as good as a rest.

"Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with completely different people." - Roald Dahl

Being in a different place with completely different people is what made me love reading, and makes me love writing.

With a few exceptions, I've avoided writing (or reading, or seeing films) about serial killers, child molesters, and murderers, mostly because these are not people I want to spend time with.

If you do enjoy vicariously confronting horrible people, perhaps making sure they get their comeuppance more often than is the case with their real-life counterparts, that's great, too.

Either way, I hope you're taking advantage of our unique ability as writers to create worlds and people to live within and to share with thousands or even millions of our fellow escapees.

(For writing advice from the finest writers, including Dickens, Jane Austen, Robert Louis Stevenson, as well as modern masters like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, get a copy of my book, "Your Creative Writing Masterclass," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

December 21, 2012

What works in the supermarket can also help you to sell your writing, whether that's a novel, a screeplay, or a non-fiction book.

I'm talking about the samples tray--you try a little of that cheese or that sausage or cookie, you like it, and before you know it in your shopping basked you've got three packs that you never would have bought otherwise. In terms of writing, here are some of the ways you can let people sample your work.

If you're a novelist:

* short stories published as an ebook

* short stories or sample chapters published on a sharing site like Wattpad

* sample chapters of your novel on your web site

If you're a non-fiction book author:

* articles on related topics published in newspapers or magazines

* a relevant blog you establish, and guest posts on other blogs

* samples on your web site

If you're a screenwriter:

* short films for which you write the script, produced by you

* short films produced from your script by others (check local film schools--they often have directing/producing students looking for scripts to work with)

* a graphic novel (or chapter of one) based on your script (graphic design and illustrations students who aren't writers may do this cheaply or for their portfolio-naturally you should make a deal to pay them if and when you make any money from this)

* spec scripts in the genre in which you're strongest

Most people are reluctant to take a chance on someone new but if your samples demonstrate your skills you'll find it much easier to win them over.

(For lots of tips on marketing your work, see "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

December 16, 2012

Publishers and producers tend to favor books and scripts that have a happy ending, but that doesn't mean it has to be soppy. Here's what novelist Celia Ahern ("P.S. I Love You") said about that in an interview with The Bookseller (July 2012):

I suppose I start them in such a dark place and I want to bring them to a light, positive place. Even when I write about something sad I want to inject it with humour. I do always want to bring things to a good, honest, positive place realistically without being sweetie and saccharine and all that.

While I want positive endings, I don't want conventional happy endings. I just want the character to wake up and feel hopeful that they can face the day. To me that's a happy ending.

Ultimately, of course, it's the rest of the story that will determine whether or not you have a happy ending, but I think her definition gives us all a lot of leeway.

November 29, 2012

Author and agent Chuck Sambuchino recently made an important
observation about modern novels: they should start inside and go out. In other
words, you start with a character and his or her actions and thoughts, and then
place them in a setting.

Many of the great novels—from a time when readers had more
time or at least more patience—started outside and then went into a character.
You’d have several pages of description of the landscape, the weather, and
maybe the ancestry of the protagonist before you ever met him or her.

If you want to grab readers, focus on what we find most
interesting: people. Introduce us to someone who find intriguing, or lovable,
or mysterious, or fascinatingly evil. Make us wonder what’s going on with them.
Then, when you’ve hooked us, you’ll have the luxury of describing the setting
and other aspects of their lives.

Of course I’ve overstated the case; not every book needs to
start with a shocking or mysterious event featuring the protagonist, but many
writers err in the other direction, assuming that we’ll stick around to meet
the main characters once the authors have finished setting the scene.

(For friendly guidance on all aspects of writing, get a copy of my book "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

November 27, 2012

If you want to write a screenplay or a novel it’s getting
started that’s the most daunting. Here are five steps that will help you work
out your plot:

1: Write a two-sentence summary of the story. The first sentence should include the protagonist and the conflict . For example the first
sentence might be: “A retired school teacher takes on a gang ruining the school
he’d proudly built into a center of excellence.”

Normally this is the extent of
the logline. I suggest adding a sentence that gives more information about the conflict and
reveals the outcome. This could be: “When lawful methods fail, he resorts to
violence that ends in his death but motivates the community to join together to
drive out the gang.”

2: Brainstorm about all the key elements of your summary.
You can put your thoughts into a mind map or onto index cards.

What ideas come up about your protagonist?
Why does he care so much about this school even after he’s not working there
any more? What is his background? What is his life like now?

What’s the nature of the opposition—the
gang? Why is this school important to them? Who leads the gang? What makes him
or her tick?

What are some possible escalations of the
conflict? What would a teacher try first? Second? Third? What could push him over
the line into violence?

Don’t stop at your first good answer to each
of these. Jot down alternatives. Try not to judge your ideas, just make sure to
record them.

3. Winnow. Go through all the raw ideas you came up
with in step two and cross out or put aside the ones that won’t work or are too
familiar.

4: Use the remaining elements to construct a rough
outline. It may be useful to employ a three-act structure: beginning, middle,
end.

5: Start writing when you’re happy with the
outline. Some writers like to go from a very rough outline to starting to write
the novel or the script. Others prefer to refine the outline until they have
all the building blocks in place.

Often I will start writing with only a very
rough outline, until I get to about a quarter of the way through the book or
script and then stop to outline the rest of the story in greater detail.

Experiment with what works best for you.

(To find out what writing advice was given by the greatest writers like Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and Robert Louis Stevenson, as well as more modern greats like Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Kurt Vonnegut, get a copy of my book, "Your Creative Writing Masterclass." It also guides you in how to apply their advice to whatever you are writing. You can get the book from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

November 24, 2012

If you want to write, check out my two books: "Your Writing Coach" and "Your Creative Writing Masterclass," both published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.

November 11, 2012

People sometimes
ask me what kinds of stories I think are going to be popular in the next year
or two. I wish I knew! I certainly didn't see the "50 Shades" craze
coming, and if somebody had pitched me the idea of "Hunger Games" as
a teen or Young Adult book, I would have guessed that no publisher would touch
a book in which kids kill other kids. Given that track record, you may not want
to pay any attention whatsoever to my guess, but I'll make it anyway.

It was prompted
by a quote in the LA Times by animator and writer/artist Louis Del Carmen:

"I also
gravitate to the underdog, “one person against the (blank)” stories, where the
individual is dwarfed by the oppression of the forces of antagonism."

I think those
kinds of stories will resonate more and more because the problems we face these
days--whether global warming, the rise of the police state, or the threat of
terrorism--all seem so large that everybody in one way or another is an
underdog.

The antagonists in the story can be metaphors for these kinds of
potentially crushing forces, and I think if they also hint at the idea that
maybe we will somehow triumph over them they could be very successful.

(For friendly guidance in
writing your book, get a copy of "Your Writing Coach," published by
Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or you other favourite bookseller.)

September 19, 2012

A reader of my book, "Your Creative Writing Masterclass," which includes writing advice from more than 100 clasic and modern authors, asked if I had to choose just one to study in order to write well, who would I choose?

However, my choice would be Anton Chekhov not only because he's brlliant but because his style works just as it stands today.

With most of the others you have to take into account that the taste for extensive descripton was different in their eras; or, as with Shakespeare, you have to immerse yourself in the events of his time and of the times from which he drew his stories, as well as the change in language. So I'm not saying Chekhov's writing is superior to that of those greats, but it is ready to use as a model today with very little extra work on our part.

If you haven't read his short stories, or haven't read them for a long time, take another look, I think you'll share my appreciation.

(The "Your Creative Writing Masterclass" is available in a print version and as an ebook.)

September 15, 2012

Publisher’s Weekly reports that a new study reveals that 55%
of the people buying Young Adult (YA) books, written with youngsters from 12 to
17 in mind, are bought by older readers. The biggest group of adult buyers are
aged from 30 to 44.

Are they buying them for their kids or siblings? Most of the
time, no. The survey by Bowker Market Research shows that 78% are buying these
books for themselves.

The results are somewhat skewed by success of the Hunger
Games series, but even allowing for that, this is a growing phenomenon. It’s
also a rare bit of good news for publishers because the study also reveals
these readers tend to be early adopters and are socially active, meaning that
they probably recommend the books they like to their friends.

One implication is that if you are writing a YA novel, don't limit your marketing of it to that younger age group. You could even follow the lead of publishers who put out the same book with one cover to appeal to younger readers and another one to appeal to adults...for instance, not only could you have two covers, but you might even have two different websites. When reaching adults you'd put in a link to the website geared to adults, when reaching kids you'd link to the one geared to them.

September 13, 2012

I wrote here not long ago about Wattpad.com, a site where
authors can post their books chapter by chapter. The Bookseller reported
recently on one success story involving that site:

“Abigail Gibbs, 17, began publishing
her novel The Dark Heroine: Dinner with a Vampire when she was 15 on the
online writer’s platform, Wattpad.

Now HarperFiction commissioning
editor Amy McCulloch and Erika Tsang from HarperCollins in the US have
pre-empted world English language rights for the novel and its sequel. The
rights were acquired for a significant six-figure sum from Scott Mendel at
Mendel Media Group LLC.

On Wattpad, the novel has been read
more than 17 million times, as readers follow the story of 18-year-old Londoner
Violet Lee, who is kidnapped by the charismatic heir to the vampire throne,
Kaspar Varn.

It was released as an e-book on September 13th
(2012), followed by a paperback edition on October 25th.”

Seventeen million is quite a number, but if you go to
Wattpad you’ll find plenty of books that have been accessed several million
times. The books tend to focus on romance and many of them have a teen audience
in mind, but other categories are represented as well. If you want to try out
your fiction to see whether it gathers followers (and comments), Wattpad is a
good, free way to do so.

(Do you want more tips on writing and marketing what you write? Get my book, Your Writing Coach, published by Nichoals Brealey and available from Amazon and other booksellers.)

September 07, 2012

Self publishing may be the hot topic right now but there
have been success stories all along. Last year Publisher’s Weekly took a look
back at some of these, including how the Pete the Cat series came to be born.
It’s in the news again because a company called Merrymakers is planning a
world-wide licensing program for a large range of Pete the Cat goods, including
shoes, toys, school supplies, etc. What I found particularly interesting is how
the character was born. This is the account written by Sally Lodge for PW:

“A chance encounter at an Atlanta stoplight led to the creation of Pete
the Cat: I Love My White Shoes, written by children's musician Eric Litwin
and illustrated by James Dean. Waiting for the light to turn, Litwin recognized
Dean, a local artist known for his paintings of a blue cat named Pete, in the
next car. Litwin told him he was a big fan of Pete and asked if he wanted to
collaborate on a book; thus a children's book protagonist was born.”

They self-published a book in 2008, and the way in which they marketed
it also stood out:

“The collaborators—Litwin on guitar and banjo and Dean with giant
easel—promoted their book at Atlanta-area bookstores, schools, libraries, and
festivals, and sold some 4,000 copies.”

A bookseller called the book to the attention of a sales rep for Harper
Collins. In 2010 the publisher released Pete the Cat and sent the two on a publicity
tour to five cities. The book made it onto the New York Times best-seller list
and as of early 2011 had sold 50,000 copies, with a follow up (Pete the Cat:
Rocking in My School Shoes) following with a first printing of 75,000 copies.

I share this story for several reasons. First, it shows the power
of asking. If Litwin had thought, “I don’t think he’d want to collaborate since he created the character,” or “Probably somebody has already suggested a
book and it might not have worked,” he never would have asked.

Second, it’s an encouraging tale for authors who self-publish,
although I’m not saying that the true definition of success is to get published
by a big publisher. Sometimes that’s the best route, sometimes it’s not.

The PW
article is about authors who made that transition. As mentioned above, the Pete
the Cat collaborators sold 4000 copies themselves; other authors mentioned in
the article sold 1000, 2000, 3000, and 179,000 copies before being picked up by
a traditional publisher. (That 179,000 is not a typo, it’s for a picture book called
I Love Your More, by Laura Duksta)

Finally, the story underscores the fact that if you have an unusual
way to promote your book you will draw attention that most authors never get.

(If you'd like friendly guidance on going from idea all the way through to publication, get a copy of my book, Your Writing Coach, available from Amazon and other booksellers.)